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Freese Earns a Place in Cardinals History

ST. LOUIS — He guessed right on a changeup, and once the ball left David Freese’s bat, he saw everything. The soaring drive deep to center field. Josh Hamilton chasing it for a few steps, then giving up. And a solitary usher in the bleachers trying to stop joyous St. Louis Cardinals fans from jumping onto the grassy batter’s eye in pursuit of Freese’s game-winning home run.

“That obviously didn’t work out,” Freese said.

On a night that started with Freese striking out with a man on, then dropping a routine popup in the fifth that led to a run, the local kid from the St. Louis suburb of Wildwood earned a lasting place in Cardinals history. If the Cardinals go on to win Game 7 on Friday night, his name may wind up on a restaurant. In this town, that seems the mandatory honor for anyone who did anything significant as a Cardinal.

In 18 World Series, the Cardinals had never won a game on a walk-off home run until Thursday night, when Freese’s leadoff shot in the 11th stunned Texas, 10-9, in Game 6. It went to extra innings because Freese, facing hard-throwing Texas closer Neftali Feliz in the ninth with the Cardinals trailing, 7-5, and down to their last strike, tripled over the head of clumsily retreating right fielder Nelson Cruz and off the wall to drive in two runs.

At first, the ball appeared catchable. “I thought I got a good piece of it,” Freese said. “I saw Cruz break back, and then rounding first base, I thought he was going to catch it. It was a tough play, and fortunately it just fell.”

“Playing anywhere else, that game is over right there,” said Lance Berkman, who scored from first base on the play. “That’s a home run for sure in Texas. In 99 percent of the parks in the league, that’s the walk-off.”

But it wasn’t. So after Hamilton’s two-run homer in the top of the 10th put Texas ahead, and the Cardinals rallied to tie it again in the bottom of the inning — Berkman delivering the second run with a two-strike single — Freese led off the 11th against Mark Lowe, the eighth Texas pitcher of the night.

“I just worked the count,” said Freese, who hit a 3-2 pitch. “I was worried about getting on base, leading off an inning, taking a walk, breaking a bat, single, whatever. The full count came, and I knew he had a good changeup. So I kind of had that in the back of my head.”

Freese jabbed an index finger in the air as he approached first base, and yanked off his helmet before jumping into a sea of jubilant teammates at the plate.

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“He took a real pretty swing,” said Albert Pujols, who started the ninth-inning rally with a double. “When I took the first step out, everybody was at home plate celebrating. And I was like, wow.”

That the night would end this way for Freese and the Cardinals seemed unimaginable earlier, with the Cardinals misplaying two popups while committing three errors in the first five innings. “I felt like I was part of a circus out there, bouncing balls off the top of my cap,” Freese said. “But man, I just wanted an opportunity.”

He got them later. The homer reminded some Cardinals fans of Game 6 of the 2004 National League Championship Series, which Jim Edmonds won with a 12th-inning home run, beating the Astros and Berkman. One of those fans was Freese.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Freese said. “I was running around the bases, and Edmonds popped into my head at that moment, because I remember when he did that in Game 6.”

It’s already been a dreamlike postseason for Freese, the Most Valuable Player of the National League Championship Series. His three RBI on Thursday night gave him a team-leading 19 this postseason, three more than Pujols.

Like every other little kid in America, Freese dreamed of a big World Series homer like this. It took a 2007 trade from San Diego to bring Freese here — for Edmonds, coincidentally — and make this possible. Edmonds’s name is on a restaurant here already.

“By the way,” Berkman said, “when you’re a little kid and you’re out there, you don’t have a bunch of reporters and fans that are ready to call you a choking dog if you don’t come through. So when you’re a kid, you don’t realize what a big moment that is. I’m just going to caution all the little kids out there, be careful what you wish for.”